The castle of S. Angelo, fortified in the time of the popes, was
built by Hadrian as his mausoleum. The bridge is the ancient _pons
Aelius_ of which the parapet is modern, and the statues of SS. Peter
and Paul and of angels bearing the instruments of the Passion were
added by Clements VII. and IX. It was built by Hadrian to reach his
mausoleum. In the middle ages it was lined by a double row of
booths, and two hundred people were crushed to death here in the
Jubilee of 1450. See pages 32, 239, 242.]
Already in the reign of Pius VI. the Romans had imbibed from the
French some of the doctrines of the Revolution, among them that of the
sovereignty of the people. From that time onwards the papal power
could never have been upheld except by foreign arms; and the spirit in
which the great Napoleon offered his services should be sufficient
evidence that the task of preserving the patrimony of Peter was not
undertaken by those whom we ought to regard as having understood
better than the Italians the things which belonged to Catholic peace.
Every one will admit that the pontifical states were not really
independent during these foreign occupations: what appears to be
less clear is that a pope-king is not necessarily more free to
exercise his high office than a pope who does not rule or who may even
be the subject of another government. There is a covered way from the
Vatican to Castel Sant' Angelo which is itself a parable of the
history of the Roman popes. It was constructed as a means of fleeing
in secrecy and safety from the Vatican when the turbulent Romans or
foreign invaders made the pope's life insecure and placed his city at
the mercy of vandals. The "Pope's own city of Rome" should never be
thought of without a mental picture of the covered passage from the
episcopal palace to the fortified castle, along which popes young and
old, bad and good, have hurried praying or cursing. Let us look upon
some of these fugitive popes, and realise from their trembling steps,
their impotent objurgations, the hunted look in their eyes, how much
of dignity and liberty the possession of Rome secured to them in the
exercise of their divine mission. There is a type of Catholic whose
favourite theme is Canossa, as his adversary's favourite theme is the
Copernican system. An emperor standing outside the Pope's castle in a
penitent's shirt through weary days and icy nights beseeching him to
withdraw the decree of excommunication strikes the imagination to the
exclusion of the sequel of the story. Four years after the experience
of Canossa, the "penitent" emperor, accompanied by his antipope,
brought an army to Rome and made Gregory fly to Castel Sant' Angelo.
The people abandoned the cause of the great Hildebrand, betrayed Rome
to the enemy at its gates and deposed their lawful pope. But imperial
vengeance for a humiliation which had been undertaken to satisfy the
superstition of the vulgar did not end there. Henry V. exacted from
Paschal II.
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